Microsoft Trademarks "Windows 365" 191
jones_supa writes The talks about a subscription-based Windows have begun again. With Windows 10 those ideas did not materialize in the way that many had speculated. Even though Microsoft has not fully detailed its Windows 10 pricing strategy, it is not believed that Microsoft is targeting an annual subscription charge for Windows at this time. However, it turns out that Microsoft has recently filed for a trademark for Windows 365, which adds a bit of fuel to the subscription based version of Windows. As of right now, Microsoft has only claimed this branding right, but as for what they will do with it, only time will tell. Deep inside the company, the idea is clearly still bubbling there.
Hard To Imagine... (Score:5, Interesting)
...Consumers and hobbyists signing on to a perpetual Microsoft tax.
I have my doubts about large customers also. Many stick with a single version of windows for years and years because they want a stable computing environment.
Well, as stable as it can be with Microsoft.
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I installed LibreOffice on my mum's computer in December (she no longer had a license to use MS Office, having retired from teaching). She was skeptical at first, but after a week phoned me to say it was working fine with her "complicated" accounting spreadsheet.
I don't know what she'd say to Linux at the moment, but $20-30/year could provide some motivation to switch.
Alternatively, some money to Canonical, RedHat, SuSE etc could fund improvements, and MS changing a subscription should make it easier for t
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I'd never let my systems run on dead man switches like that.
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Agreed.
$20/year would get a LOT of people on board.
$10/month -- a lot of people will pass on that. Quite a few friends will NEVER support Adobe ever again now that they want a perptual $10/month for Photoshop CC.
Say NO to software rendering
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Damit, should be:
Say NO to software renting, aka price gouging.
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>> Hard To Imagine Consumers and hobbyists signing on to a perpetual Microsoft tax
Why? That's how cell phone providers and cable TV providers and ISPs already do it. You just bury the cost of the OS and office environment in the service charge and...Voilà!
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I think consumers are just used to one purchase when it comes computers and software. You pay, you own it, it's yours.
I don't know how their Office subscription is doing though, so maybe they've snookered some people into getting used to it.
Re:Hard To Imagine... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know how their Office subscription is doing though, so maybe they've snookered some people into getting used to it.
I like the Office 365 subscription [microsoftstore.com]. It's $10/month (versus $400 for Office Pro), I get regular updates, and I can install it on 5 machines and 5 phones. I currently have it installed on 4 laptops and two phones. To do those installs via hard media would be $1600. It'll take over 13 years of subscription to meet the price of buying the equivalent suites for my installs. And with Microsoft rolling significant updates every couple years, this is a vastly cheaper way for me to keep up with the releases. Not sure how the leads to being "snookered"...
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There hasn't been a significant update for office in a decade or more.
All they ever do is rearrange the menus and make things generally worse.
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Why? That's how cell phone providers and cable TV providers and ISPs already do it.
The TV, ISP, and phone companies provide ongoing services. I could maybe see paying for ongoing security updates, but not for access to use the software on my own hardware, assuming I was fine with running it without updates.
You will have no choice. (Score:4, Insightful)
Every computer will come with it and you won't be able to get a game or new hardware without having to check extensively that it supports Linux (or BSD) and find that it doesn't yet.
You won't be able to get older versions.
You won't be allowed on the internet without a "supported OS".
You will have no choice in this matter except not to play at all and give up computers. And then if enough do that, it will be "explained" as being due to piracy or some other guff.
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Who modded this up? You need a reality check, stat.
Re:Hard To Imagine... (Score:4, Interesting)
Well if Windows becomes a rental system, then wouldn't that spell the immediate removal of the MS tax, and that the base OS can't essentially be pirated any longer? Meaning All hardware companies can freely put any OS or none on there without fear of reproach?
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Well if Windows becomes a rental system, then wouldn't that spell the immediate removal of the MS tax, and that the base OS can't essentially be pirated any longer? Meaning All hardware companies can freely put any OS or none on there without fear of reproach?
I don't think it would.
Instead of getting Windows for "free" from the OEMs, they will give you "one year for free". The OEMs will still have to pay Microsoft but - as ever - the OEMs will get a discounted rate for that "free year". I'm sure it will als
Re:Hard To Imagine... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can see something similar to O365. However, would the enterprise want to license production servers on this scale and have a glitch cause them to shut down? Good luck with that. The only way I can see something like this happening is using a KMS-like mechanism, but even then, there are many companies who run Windows air-gapped where a KMS would be unacceptable.
To be real, MS needs to take their stock private, just like Dell, and get off the stock market where they don't have to just look at each quarter and little else. This way, MS can expand into a lot more markets (which mean a lot more long term growth) than they can now. A few examples:
1: MS can make money by licensing their IP... same thing that keeps IBM from collapsing. If MS licensed Active Directory and Exchange to Apple and UNIX makers, it would mean ongoing profits for them with zero work. Oracle, IBM, and RedHat would pay MS for licensing so their products could run MS technologies. This is a win for everyone in the picture, because it means core functionality that would be forced to be on Windows could be on other environments.
2: MS could start working on new technologies to leverage their software advantage. For example, with a two phase deduplication process similar to PureStorage devices (where basic deduplication is done on writes, and a second pass is done in the background for even better space savings), coupled with better RAM management in Hyper-V, coupled with the ability for Hyper-V nodes to access each other's drives via Infiniband connections... they would have made the SAN obsolete while offering just as much, if not more redundancy.
3: Re-engineer for security. Vista was a major step in this regard, but it has been ten years, and the Windows kernel needs to be re-engineered again. This time, it might be good to have Hyper-V be always on, so any machine, desktop or workstation is a VM, and the user can load an AV utility at the hypervisor level to catch rootkits, even RAM based ones. Of course, this makes backups easy since the whole machine's snapshot, RAM and all, can be done.
As for a subscription for consumers, it is an option, but it has to be priced right. Too high, and users will stick to previous of Windows indefinitely.
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#3 everything on a VM : that's very interesting but you need IOMMU support at the hardware, firmware and commercial levels.
Nvidia (for graphics cards) makes the feature enterprise-only, Intel has byzantine rules of "this i5 or i7 but not this one", AMD enables it everywhere but motherboard vendors sparingly care about the feature.
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You can already do true AD under Linux with vanilla Samba 4.x. And its been availible since 2011.
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1. They probably derive from value from the vendor lock-in than they expect from sharing. The rival OSes can already join an Active Directory domain (some require third-party tools, some don't). Right now, if you want to manage a fleet of Windows desktops you need a few Windows Server licenses for your domain controllers---and the requisite CALs. There are already open source AD clones anyway, which is probably why 2008, 2008 R2, and 2012 functional levels have such nice new features. They want to maximize
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An interesting thought as an alternative to your point #3 is to make your BASE OS native (so that you can play games/etc with native power), but any UNSIGNED applications run through App-V...
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I'm curious if they will offer bundles with Office 365 and Xbox Live Gold. Say at $299/year, you can put Windows on 5 computers, Office on 5 computers, and you get up to 5 Xbox Live Gold accounts.
Re:Hard To Imagine... (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft already tried the corporate subscription model with Win XP. Their marketing division talked a lot of their corporate customers into signing on to a 3 year contract instead of outright buying XP. The contract promised an upgrade to their next version of Windows, which was expected to happen 2-3 years after XP was released. Previous releases of Windows had been:
Windows 3.0 - May 1990
Windows 3.1 - March 1992
Windows 95 - August 1995
Windows 98 - June 1998
Windows 2000 - Feb 2000
Windows XP - Oct 2001
So roughly 2-3 years between releases. Most companies knew full well Microsoft was pushing a subscription model, and were wary. But Microsoft priced it so that considering you were getting two releases of Windows, it was a good deal compared to buying the licenses outright. Most signed the 3 year contracts in 2002-2003.
Vista wasn't released until Nov 2006 (volume licensing) and Jan 2007 (retail). More than 5 years after XP, and 1-2 years after most of those 3 year contracts expired. There were howls, mudslinging in corporate press, and lawsuits. I think Microsoft ended up extending those contracts by an extra year for free, which still left some customers out in the cold. And on top of that, Vista wasn't considered a very good upgrade so most companies ended up sticking with XP until Windows 7 was released in Oct 2009.
The companies which signed up for Microsoft's subscription model 3-year support contract felt they'd been royally screwed. It will be a cold day in Hell before they ever sign up for a Windows 365. This is also the best argument against a subscription model - the constant revenue stream makes life easier for accounting, but it destroys the market incentive for the company to make improvements, add new features, and release them on a timely schedule.
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Also-- and I've made this argument many times before-- the OS shouldn't be something that expires. The "subscription" that you're talking about, IIRC, was "Software Assurance" which includes support and free upgrades, but Windows XP wouldn't suddenly stop working if you chose not to renew your subscription.
The rumor regarding this is that Microsoft has been planning a subscription version of Windows where, if you stop paying, your computer stops working. To my mind, that's unacceptable. Next thing you k
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It's not always about choice either. Companies have computers running that someone set up a long time ago, and does a small but vital job for the business. Humans are human, and through attrition, bad times where all costs are cut to the bone, licenses aren't always renewed even though they should be.
The question then is whether it's acceptable that something suddenly stops working. Not getting support and updates is one thing, but pulling the plug?
Since this is /. here's the obligatory car analogy: W
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...Consumers and hobbyists signing on to a perpetual Microsoft tax.
Car analogy. If people don't like perpetual payments, why is car leasing such a big thing in the US?
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Maybe because they get a brand spanking new car every two to three years?
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Trading ownership rights for bling not normally affordable. This is caused by stupidity.
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Think about this. Many people might consider paying the M$ tax in order to avoid the real cost of upgrades. Having to retrain staff, having to install upgrades, having hardware drivers fail and needing hardware to be replaced, having to convert data to make it compatible with upgrades, all of those cost more than the unit price of the upgrade, far, far more. So a protection racket, pay the rent or else face upgrade nightmares ;D.
Re:Hard To Imagine... (Score:5, Insightful)
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In the situation you described, your current hardware has a relatively easily repairable failure. You have the option of repairing it (yourself or professionally), and you have the option of replacing it. I
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Sounds like they're going to be doing some sort of long term supported versions simliar to firefox and ubuntu.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk]
Rental models vs. paid support (Score:3)
Want to hasten your own decline for consumers? Try foisting a subscription model on them and then acting like it's not the consumer who owns the computer.
I'd like to believe that, but unfortunately a significant fraction of the customer base for software appears to be quite happy paying up. Adobe show no remorse over moving to subscription-only with Creative Cloud. Games companies show no remorse about requiring always-online DRM schemes, and little sympathy even when the servers fall over and people can't play their new game on Christmas morning. I assume the amount of money they're making from the people who still pay up outweighs the amount they've lost i
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However, some software -- particularly system software -- naturally becomes less useful over time unless it receives updates to ensure compatibility with newer things and to protect against newer security and privacy risks. So, my take is that big software companies like Microsoft are missing a huge opportunity right now. I would happily pay a reasonable recurring fee to a software company in return for ongoing compatibility and security fixes, if that meant I could keep using the version of software I actually liked and found useful indefinitely, without having to buy into "upgrades" that might break something. Some of the big names have taken some steps in this direction with various corporate licensing schemes, but these are usually the preserve of big business customers, while smaller businesses and private customers are stuck with off-the-shelf, upgrade-when-it-runs-out software.
I tend to agree with this bit. The hard part about software is that it is surrounded by so many other evolving software components. Keeping the software up to date is something required especially with industries that still have some growth to incur (CAD is one I deal with all the time). From the point of view of the developer, you need funds to continue developing the product and keeping it updated to today's specs. With simple software, say a calculator, you don't need this. When a better calculator comes
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This is literally how enterprises operate right NOW. They pay a continual fee for OS upgrades and updates. Usually that means they could run the latest and greatest (e.g Windows 8 :P ) but most stick to a single OS release for a long period because they want consistency and stability. Enterprises do not buy copies of Windows outright - they want support contracts.
But how would this new system fail? I.e. what about the outdated machine doing some simple job that no-one has bothered to upgrade (or no one wants to because they want an old OS to test against). Sure these forgotten boxes are poor practice, but I think they're pretty common, that seems like a lot of extra work for the IT dept to make sure that each copy of windows is properly registered and talking to the right license server.
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Modern versions of Windows (Vista and newer) will find your license server automatically, unless you configure either your OS image or your license server to do otherwise.
It's a simple matter of having the right SRV record in DNS, and the license server will add it automatically if it's setup by a user with the necessary privileges.
The current license server supports all modern Windows versions. I wonder if that will change once Vista leaves its extended support phase. I expect it will take minimal effort t
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It's no extra work for an IT department that isn't staffed by idiots.
Enterprise versions of windows talk to an internal key server, are managed via SCCM, and are monitored by SCOM. Changes are pushed out by group policy. There is no touching "each copy of windows" with very few exceptions.
The internal activation server is simply a compliance reporting server so that the organisation knows how many copies of windows they are ACTUALLY using, so that they don't pay for too many (or too few) EA licenses.
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$100/year for a word processor, spreadsheet and a bunch of useless stuff?
That has only been made worse for 10 years?
Not just no, fuck no.
Leap years? (Score:5, Funny)
... but what happens on a leap year? Will Windows be unusable on that day? I mean, more unusable than it already is.
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... but what happens on a leap year? Will Windows be unusable on that day? I mean, more unusable than it already is.
For that, you have to upgrade to Windows 365.2425.
Leap Seconds (Score:2)
leap years be damned! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:leap years be damned! (Score:5, Funny)
You'll have the choice of paying extra for Windows 366 on those years, or else leaving your computer off for an entire day.
Time.h (Score:2)
You'll have the choice of paying extra for Windows 366 on those years, or else leaving your computer off for an entire day.
Nah, they just rewrote time.h to avoid future leap-years.
We're not agrarian any more, so our years don't need to be synchronized to the seasons.
Windows 10 is free (Score:2)
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Maybe I'm just too cynical.
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The first is a reiteration that the first year is free, for the 'supported lifetime' of the device. There is room for MS to make things tricky and MS hasn't responded to the comments on those fronts. The latter was just an article saying that Apple had great success in getting *their* userbase to upgrade when they gave it to them for free. Neither is supporting the inevitable success of a subscription model.
On DirectTV and HBO, those are both companies that have *ALWAYS* been subscription model from thei
Free software: Plant your own berry bushes (Score:2)
You must wait 20 minutes - or you can buy some Ballmerberries for just $4.99 and continue writing your thesis!
"Screw that; I'll just plant my own berry bushes." [Heads off to libreoffice.org]
Microsoft has to keep in mind that implementing usage quotas into Office 365 would likely drive users away. Microsoft would especially lose users with a lot of usage under whatever billing metric it chooses but little need for the more sophisticated features that LibreOffice Writer doesn't import well.
If it's cloud based like Office 365 (Score:2)
it could be a decent service for folks on Linux. My company has gone with Office 365, and while the actual Office apps are currently a bit weak, Outlook works pretty well. Since I prefer Linux, and run it on my development machine, I have to boot up my VPN to do Windows based tasks. Running their apps on the browser would be more convenient for me.
However, my current take is that their cloud application suite (Word, PPT, Sharepoint) isn't nearly as functional as the Google Drive analogs.
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That's actually one of the big challenges Microsoft is facing. They have an internal conflict of interest between their OS division and apps division (mostly Office). From the viewpoint of the apps division, they are best off making Office available for all platforms. From the viewpoint of the OS division, they are best off maki
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Yes. My kids do all of their school writing assignments on Google Drive (Docs); my daughter, now in college, did all of her work on the Google cloud during High School, and the kids love the real time collaboration features. My youngest, in 4th grade, uses a "private" Google service that their school set up. My point here is that I'm sure many people are using these Google services and Microsoft saw the writing on the wall. That is likely what helped the App group divorce themselves from the OS group i
Microsoft needs SaaS to continue increasing profit (Score:2)
Microsoft needs SaaS for their profit to keep going up. They switched businesses to essentially the same thing a long time ago with the site license.
I really don't think it will be successful with consumers unless it's free. There are alternatives these days. I'll never forget Balmer laughing at the Chromebooks, now microsoft is so afraid of them they are trying to produce similar products that basically bring back the netbook (which is NOT what a chromebook is). The Microsoft ship can't turn this quickly,
Yeah... No... (Score:2)
I only use Windows for gaming and I already have a few games with monthly fees. If I need to pay a monthly/yearly fee to keep using that PC, I'll just ditch it and buy a Nintendo or Sony console instead without ever considering anything from Microsoft.
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...and then have to pay a monthly/yearly fee for PSN access?
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Use of a game console other than online multiplayer does not require a paid subscription. Single-player and offline multiplayer have no recurring fee.
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Nintendo doesn't have any fees for games that support online multiplayer. ... not that they have a lot of those in the first place.
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If it's required just to play online with other people, then that just leaves Nintendo as the only gaming company which isn't run by insane people.
Planning a head (Score:5, Funny)
"Windows 8 suxxxxxxs, what to do?"
"Windows 8.1 as a stopgap. And rush Windows 9 into production."
"No, we need to give the perception of totally abandoning 8. Skip 9 and call it 10."
"Might not be far enough. How about 360 like X-Box? Release in 2016."
"Nah sounds like a toy. How about Windows 365 -- The everyday computer for the everyman?"
"Everyperson."
"Ok, do it."
2016 rolls around. $2 billion in ads come out.
"Microsoft proudly introduces Windows 365! The everyday computer for the everyperson!"
"Oh my god."
"What?"
"2016 is a leap year."
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"2016 is a leap year."
So Windows 365.2425 then... and hope like crap no new FDIV bug shows up!
Losing their minds... (Score:5, Insightful)
On all fronts, the competition has been hurting them by reduced/no OS licensing cost inflicted on the consumer and/or vendor. For Apple, it's to push hardware, for google to push ecosystem. In both their major competitor's cases, they are making inroads by using the OS as a giveaway as a means to a more profitable end.
MS doubling down on charging for the OS would only help their competition. If they are serious about enabling their ecosystem, they need to restructure things so those goals fund the OS development, not require the OS development to pay for itself.
MS also misunderstands another facet. They think a rolling release OS is critical to their success. They think they need the OS to be able to incorporate new function on a whim. They probably feel that way as they are impatient to have Windows 10 come along to fix what they did wrong in Windows 8. The problem is no one was demanding features out of Windows 7. The sin in windows 8 was inflicting undesired features, not being slow to deliver features. A rolling release will mean that MS customers pissed with some major design change are less able to latch on to some MS sanctioned safe haven (e.g. today it is windows 7) and look harder at jumping on OSX, IOS, Android, or a desktop linux depending on the area. Enthusiasts may bitch and moan about not having Lollipop 5 minutes after it releases, but 99% of the world would just as soon have their device work basically the same way day to day.
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MS doubling down on charging for the OS would only help their competition. If they are serious about enabling their ecosystem, they need to restructure things so those goals fund the OS development, not require the OS development to pay for itself.
That's why, IMO, Microsoft should go the Google route. They should make Windows free (maybe even Libre), and try to make their money from server software and services. Charge for Office 365, including MS Office, Storage for OneDrive, InTune, Exchange, etc. Create a consumer-focused version of InTune/Office 365-- sort of like iCloud. Continue charging for Windows Server, Exchange, and Sharepoint for business use. Use Windows for desktops/laptops/tablets/mobile as a loss-leader platform that enables them
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If Microsfot cared about corporate users, they wouldn't have released Window 8.
Trademarking is cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Registering a trademark is cheap, especially for any outfit that's large enough to have their own lawyers already on staff. So, there isn't much percentage in trying to read anything big into the registering of a trademark. In this case, they would need no greater reason to trademark "Windows 365" than the fact that they already have some related trademarks.
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Since they already have a trademark on “Windows,” I don’t understand what’s to gain from a separate one for “Windows 365,” which is already covered under the base TM. It’s not like a competitor can put out any "Windows [suffix]" operating system, regardless of what that suffix is. It’s sort of like Coca-Cola registering “Diet Coca-Cola."
software as a service goes platform as a service (Score:2)
Windows 365 is a follow-on to Office 365, it seems. Will Windows 10 be hosted on a cloud? Is the new subscription model to be based on local licensing, everything else key-dependent and run from and on the cloud? I'm not saying annual subscription, but that does open the door to, for example, the same or similar model to the Office 365 of $8/user/month.
Is this the marker for the end of capable, standalone consumer devices, I wonder? If all this rings true, what does it mean for alternative platforms such as
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Considering how predatory everything is now, I would never want any of this.
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Windows 365 is a follow-on to Office 365, it seems. Will Windows 10 be hosted on a cloud?
That's actually a pretty good guess. Microsoft hosted VDI would not be outside the realm of possibility.
Very hard to imagine (Score:2)
Same old, same old.... (Score:2)
On one of those occasions, I was deeply involved with an effort by a major international company to set up Office on rental licences, as part of their portfolio to offer to business customers. I helped set up and run a trial, we got some trial customers in, and tried to get Microso
The good news is (Score:3)
that 365 is an odd number. Even numbered versions of Windows sucked.
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Bad news: every four years (except every 100 years, except every 400 years) it'll suck.
2016 (Score:2)
Finally , with a subscription based Windows, the era of Linux Desktop arrives!!! again!!! and again!!!
Leap Years... (Score:2)
365 (Score:2)
At least we will be able to use it 1 day for free every 4 years.
Good Riddance? (Score:2)
Redundant (Score:2)
Education and New vs Old (Score:3)
Two things:
1) Many educational institutions already pay yearly for Microsoft products through their Microsoft Consolidated Campus Agreement. While the OSes are generally purchased along with new computers, the upgrades are rolled into the "Desktop Core" package -- so we go and buy a hundred computers with Windows 7 Home (or whatever the cheapest one is outside of Win7 Basic), then we can upgrade them to Windows 8.1 Enterprise for "free" (or Win 7 Enterprise)...and eventually Windows 10 assuming hardware specs out well enough. It isn't cheap -- somewhere around $35/person (there's a nice equation) and that gets upgrades to Windows, new Office, and a few other things. And installs can go anywhere once you've completed the equation -- you might have 200 people in your department, but 500 computers -- and you can install on all 500 computers.
2) Windows comes wrapped up with the new PC usually, so where pricing hits you is with upgrades, or if you're building your own from components. A subscription model makes good business sense -- steadier revenue. But revenue hasn't really been a Microsoft problem since such a high percentage of computers are licensed with Windows.
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How many people actually upgrade their copy of Windows that originally came with the machine?
Of those, how many did a legit upgrade?
For most people, the OS that comes with your device is the OS that will be on your device until it goes to the computer equivalent of the Elephant's Graveyard.
Did they even have to? (Score:2)
Microsoft Trademarks "Windows 365"
As if anyone would have got away with branding something with that name prior to MS trademarking it...
Or does this mean Windows 364 and Windows 366 (for leap years, of course) are still anybody's?
Real reason for name (Score:2)
It's like they almost turned it around, but went too far and still in the same general direction.
The geek pushes the panic button. Again. (Score:2)
Microsoft reported a 128 percent year-over-year growth for Azure and its other commercial cloud services, including Office 365 for business. Home users of Office 365 (now numbering 7 million, Microsoft says) also edged up 25 percent over the last quarter.
In some ways the Office 365 figures are more significant than the Azure numbers, since they hint that one of Microsoft's most intractable customer groups -- users of the desktop, on-premises Office suite -- can be transformed incrementally into cloud users, and from "transactional purchasing to annuity" (read subscription) customers. Microsoft has made wise moves in that area, such as offer more granular Office 365 subscription deals for small businesses. The basic Business SKU, which includes the full Office desktop apps, is now $8.25 per user per month for up to five devices per user.
Microsoft reported solid Q1 gains with Azure and Office 365, but the payoff from its mobile efforts may still be a long way off [infoworld.com] [oct 24, 2014]
Nah, they're just thinking ahead... (Score:2)
Given that MS are skipping over having a Windows 9 because of the negative reception of Windows 8, they're just anticipating that everyone will hate Windows 10 so much that they're going to skip over all the numbers from 11-364.
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Nah, I think it's clear that Microsoft is not counting in decimal like the rest of us. Sure, they start with 1, 2, 3 like you'd expect, but then after that it's 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, 365. The next version will be something like 13.111.Xylophone. This is not Base 10. This is Base Bob.
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Kudos sir... that was frigging hilarious!
Base Bob. ROFLMAO
Does This Imply? (Score:2)
Read between the lines... it's "365" but (Score:3)
365 K (Score:2)
Is that the temperature the CPU will run at?
(373.15 is the boiling point of water at normal atmospheric pressure)
Re:failure imminent (Score:4, Informative)
As per July 2014, MS was hauling in $2.5Billion in revenue for Office 365, an increase of 2.5x over the previous year.
http://news.microsoft.com/2014... [microsoft.com]
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My employer is migrating, with the justification that they will no longer need to maintain Exchange servers, support will be easier (just a web browser), the included storage can replace some local SANs, and computers will require less RAM.
I'm particularly sceptical of the last claim.
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Office 365 isn't just the online component, it also gives you the "thick" version of office.
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Well, for one, that's very limited. It only applies for devices that microsoft approves and only if the manufacturer agrees to promote Bing. If you are buying a conventional laptop, MS is not quite so... generous.
For another, the reason for how selective it is tells you how tenuous the situation is. MS only allows it if they think the device competes with iPad. At some point, either MS gives up displacing iPad or succeeds. Either way it's not indicative that MS wants to keep up the practice for any lon
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Microsoft does not sell the hardware (see Apple comment) they cannot make back the money on the software by giving it away for free.
Of course google doesn't sell the hardware either. Part of MS' problem is that they can't decide if they want to be like Apple or Google and are aiming for an odd mix of both and their own legacy self.
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That's irrelevant for many people anyway, including me, it's a matter of psychology. I wouldn't even pay $2 a month or $24 a year. Call it irrational or however else you like, but one-time costs != running costs for me no matter what the end result is. I do not lease things.
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